Zend Gets $9 Million in Venture Capital

Yesterday, Zend Technologies announced that the company just closed a $9 million round in venture capital from Greylock Partners. Sean Michael Kerner at InternetNews.com wonders what for?

"While that certainly sounds like good news on the surface - an open source vendor getting money etc - Zend isn't exactly a startup still is it?," Kerner said. "Zend has been a successful (as far as I can tell) vendor for over 6 years."

According to the Zend press release, "The investment will fuel the Company's accelerated product development and market expansion at a time when the entire PHP ecosystem is experiencing rapid adoption by mainstream corporate IT."

That's pretty vague.

"We do know that Zend is growing their technology," Kerner wrote, "with Zend Framework and new cloud initiatives that will grow PHP to the next level."

Or, Kerner said, maybe Zend is looking at an IPO offering or perhaps a buyer, such as IBM or Oracle?